A Book of Fine Philosophy
by midgewood58
Summary: Thomas Anderson has a visit from the strangest customer ever to grace Jumpin' Jack's Chicken Shack. A sequel to "A Routine Sunflower."


**A Fine Book of Philosophy**   
By Madeline Elster 

**Disclaimer:** The main character and the concept do not belong to me. They are the creations of the Wackowski Brothers, writers and directors of the _Matrix_ trilogy, which is also owned and distributed by Warner Brothers and Village Roadshow. I am now making any profits off of this story, nor am I using the character/concept with their permission. I am also a college student and would not have any money to offer them if they so chose to sue me. Everyone and everything else that does not in any way resemble anyone or anything in _The Matrix_ came from my own head.

**Author's Note:** Alas that this ends on such an abrupt note, but I wrote this at a state that I was not in when I ended it. This is the sequel-of-sorts to "A Routine Sunflower," in which Mr. Anderson is warned by a sunflower of impending doom. Now he is much older—seventeen or eighteen, in fact—and no longer afraid of sunflowers. Hopefully you will enjoy! :)

Special thanks to my beta shelles, who for some reason lets me talk incessantly about my fics. 

~*~

"Thomas, get your lazy bum out on the floor!" cried Mr. Wittlebottom, evening shift manager of the esteemed Jumpin' Jack's Chicken Shack. "Thomas! Did you hear what ah said? Get your lazy bum on the floor! You got a _customer_!"

As you may have noticed, the service of Jumpin' Jack's Chicken Shack, located in the heart of Capital City's urban sprawl, was not quick, as illustrated by the remarkable speed of its topnotch waiter, Thomas Anderson. Why, it was rumored among many dissatisfied customers that it took Mr. Anderson, the very same Thomas Mr. Wittlebottom addressed, a full thirty minutes just to notice two customers seated at one of his tables. By the time he had grabbed pen and paper, they'd already gone home to tell all their loved ones never to go to Jumpin' Jack's--or at least to never, ever ask for Thomas Anderson as a waiter.

But bah, humbug to the customers! Bah, humbug, to those who did not know he was a mere high school _senior_ with other things to worry about than serving gluttons. Besides, if they had _really_ wanted fried chicken, they would have gone to the fried chicken restaurant across the street and not have come to this wooden restaurant that sold all varieties of beef, pork, seafood, even pancakes, and very few varieties of actual chicken. 

"Yes! I heard you! I'm coming!" shouted he, who wondered if Mr. Wittlebottom understood his situation: He was a High School _Senior_ on the sacred path to education and enlightenment. The customer would understand if he devoted one more minute--or perhaps two, or three or four or five, or even ten--to reading this fine book of philosophy a friend from school had recommended. Guaranteed, if he read the book he would astound _everyone_, including The Ladies, with his superior intellect. Would the customer want to be waited on by a stupid waiter? Surely not!

He imagined discussing with this mysterious customer--a cultured woman from the city, who, wanting to get away from the dull bourgeois, retreated to the suburbs--the fine points of this book of philosophy. He would say with confidence how this book was Truth, how it applied to Real Life, how the author was most profound in his thought. The woman would agree. She would complement him on his intellect. She would comment him on how mature he was: "You cannot be a high school senior," she'd say. "None of the idiots back in the city can even spell two plus two. And you do not look like a high school senior. You're more mature looking than most. More handsome." And then, days later, he would go back to school and boast about his older girlfriend from the city. He'd be popular then. He'd be a--

"LAZY BUM!" hollered Mr. Wittlebottom. "Don't care about your customers, sitting back here reading a lousy _book_...you good for nothing _slacker_...get your lousy, no-good, fancy-book reading bum out there and serve that customer before I fire you!"

Alas, poor Thomas: At that moment his book was snatched away by the same hands that grabbed the back of his shirt and lifted him to his feet and shoved him out to the floor--the empty floor where a man wearing a bowler cap and sunglasses sat by himself. Not an attractive, philosophical city girl in sight. Thomas sadly grabbed his pen and pad and walked to the man's table. When he arrived, the man in the bowler cap and sunglasses greeted him first with his hand extended and his smile very, very wide. "_You're_ Thomas Anderson! _The_ Thomas Anderson!" said he with zeal.

"Yeah," said _the_ Thomas Anderson, quite agitated and disappointed. "That is my name. Now what do you want?"

"I want to speak to _you_, of course!" piped the man in the bowler cap and sunglasses. Thomas rolled his eyes and scoffed. Silly customers.

"What do you want _to eat_? Fried shrimp? Fried steak? Fried pancakes? Fried chicken?" The man looked puzzled. "_Well_?" No reply. "Look, man, I don't have time. I have a philisoc...philisop...phili...soff...i...ck...I have a book I need to read...for school. Tell me what you want to eat now, so I can go back to reading, and you can get your food A-S-A-P."

But the man remained completely confused. Why, it must have taken him a full five minutes before he understood and replied cheerily: "Oh! You mean what do I want to eat? Nothing. I already ate!"

"Then what did you come _here_ for?" replied Thomas angrily. Indeed, wouldn't you be angry if a customer had wasted five precious minutes of your time just to tell you he already ate? Of course, it would not be _wise_ for you to be visibly angry, for it is bad customer service to be angry with a customer. But Thomas, as you might have noticed, is not a very good _garçon_. 

You might have also noticed, though, that the man in the bowler cap and sunglasses is very what we would call "star struck." He wouldn't care either way if Thomas had blown his top and used some fancy kung-fu skills to vent his anger, or if Thomas had humbled himself, apologized for his rudeness and been kind to him the rest of the night (which certainly would have been a better option than using kung-fu, for that would result in a particularly nasty concept called a "lawsuit"). So regardless, the man in the bowler cap and sunglasses kept smiling in that star-struck way, oblivious to the unkind treatment of his waiter, and replied to him in a most happy way that "I've come here to talk to you, Thomas Anderson! I have some very important and good news to tell you! Do you remember the sunflower?"

Thomas went through his normal reaction of confusion mingled with indignity mingled with shock and expressed through profanity, and then, after looking at the earnest face of the man in the bowler cap and sunglasses, he began to flip through his memory to see if the man had a valid claim. And he began to recall sunflowers--not a single sunflower, but a bed of sunflowers reaching as far as the fence would allow, sunflowers stretching high into the sky, growing taller and taller until they outgrew him. He remembered a boy too terrified to play in the bed of sunflowers because he thought they would speak of strange things like vampires and werewolves and evil men in suits. And then he remembered the sunflower, the sunflower that came before the others, the one that doused him in water and spoke to him of such strange things. And reluctantly he replied, "Yes. I remember the sunflower."

"Good. Sit down, now," said the man, whose voice had now taken a very serious turn. "I'll tell what you need to know." Thomas was reluctant to sit in the same booth as a stranger who knew his name and knew his past, but in any case he had not much other choice than to trust this man, as he didn't precisely seem the sort to be in cahoots with the Mafia (bowler cap and all). So he sat down on the opposite side of the table. 

"What do you have to tell me?"

"Ah!" the man piped, folding his hands in a most elaborate fashion and sitting up straight with his most perfect posture. "The good news is that they've stopped trying to kill you!"

"What?"

"Yes! I'm happy to report that you've survived at least ten attempted sniper shootings, though you _barely_ survived that poisoning...silly kid, couldn't you smell the arsenic?" 

"_Arsenic_?"

"Did you really think you had the flu?" The man laughed. "No, kid, that was arsenic poisoning. In fact, if I remember correctly that drink was nothing but arsenic. It looked like soda, didn't it? A brilliant piece of programming, really...Lethal, but brilliant. But it didn't hurt you at all, did it?"

"Of course not. I was only in the hospital for seven months," said Thomas indignantly. "What's your point?"

"My point?" said the man, confused. "Oh! My point. My point is that the important news is that you _are_ the One!"

"The what?" Because "the One" could mean many things. It could mean the one who shoplifted the other day in a store that happened to be the man's. It could be the one who's on some Mafioso's hit list, the one he particularly wanted to kill the most. It could be the one this man wants his daughter to marry, or the one that the man wanted to marry him. Or it could be the one who drank a glass of arsenic, thought it was soda, and was hospitalized for seven months. Either way, it was a very ambiguous statement and Thomas did not fully understand its meaning. 

The man flicked his hand in the air. "Oh, don't pay any mind to it now, kiddo, but now that we know we can go ahead with the process."

"What process?"

"Your disillusionment process, of course! We're going to suck the faith right out of you so you'll be a hardened cynic. It'll sensitize you to the Matrix, but, man, you'll be a pain in Morpheus's behind, I tell you."

"What?"

"Don't mind that, kid. You'll understand ten years from now, I think. Or maybe more." The man scratched his head for a moment then pointed a dandruff-peppered finger in poor Thomas's face. "Until then you ought to forget everything I just said and go about your life as an independent freethinker!" Then he looked at his watch and gave a little squeak. "Egads, look at the time! Must be going now." He pulled Thomas' hand and shook it vigorously. It was quite a wonder it didn't fall off, and that Thomas didn't shake like a bowl of jelly on the San Andreas Fault. "We'll meet again, hopefully. If not, then all the luck in the world to you, kiddo!" And with that the strange man in the bowler cap darted out of the door and out of Thomas's life.

Now that was a bizarre little incident, wasn't it?


End file.
